Hacking Google using Scroogle

Scroogle the choice of connoiseurs

How to improve your ROI with bespoke in house search engine data mining software.

When Google withdrew their API for their data set in the general search space they scarcely announced it from the rooftops. It slid in quite quietly. But the ability to query the big G directly was very handy to a lot of folk. Including SEO operators. You can still hear the screaming in the forums now. What these guys were doing was using the API access for two operations which are very close to their hearts. One: they wanted to check their search engine rankings for multiple keywords for multiple clients on a regular basis. And two: they wanted to check the back links for the same clients. Not that I know anything about *Social Media Penetration*.

Firing up my linux box I notice a curious ommission in my distro. No cURL. I do the apt-get install thing and we are up and running. Need to spoof Google with a header? No problem. Just add it from the command line. So Google thinks you are a nice friendly Mozilla browser on the Windows XP platform. Formulate your query. Then send it. No. Don't do that. Send it via a proxy. Like Scroogle. It strips out your IP. How cool is that?

Then download all that lovely data - not in a tatty browser, but where it counts - in your system. Then grep the results. Now do your thing. Build admin panels for live reporting of SERPS. Do e-mail campaigns for inbound link building. Cut costs. Reduce boredom. Add value.

Linux. Ahh. The joy.